“M-my uncle has them.” Jake swallowed hard. “Please don’t hurt me, man.”
“People in my line of work don’t typically operate on good faith.” Nicholas studied him for a long time, letting the other man squirm before releasing him with a hard shove. “Put your keys on the counter and make sure she leaves.”
Jake tossed them clumsily on the Formica before darting into the bedroom. Nicholas pushed off from the wall to join Jay in the kitchen while Jay’s mother swore in her bedroom, grabbing jewelry and various other things and shoving them into a pink laundry basket.
He picked up what was left of the rosé wine and took a leisurely drink, his throat bobbing. He swallowed and held it out, offering it to her like a fallen angel offering to lead her down into hell. But Jay knew what hell was like. She’d grown up surrounded by its gilt trappings like a bird in a cage, and had almost been blinded by their deceitful dazzle.
Nicholas had burst into her life and dragged her back just when she finally thought she’d have a chance to escape, stalking and blackmailing her into submission, only to get down on his knees and offer to tear it all apart, bar by golden bar, if it meant that she would be his—and, more than that: if she would allow him to behers.
To a girl who had never felt wanted, being coveted—fought over—foughtfor—was frightening. She had never wanted to be another man’s conquest. She had attended far too many feminist lectures to see herself as athing.
But being the treasure he protected, the thing that made him turn vicious at her request—
Jay took the bottle and watched his eyes flare as she drank from where he’d put his mouth.
She thought she might like that.
Chapter Twenty
???????
Nicholas threw his car into park in front of V.H. Investigations. The fake Spanish revival tiling really set the stage. If you were going to hire a guy to catch your second wife cheating—or entrap your daughter who desperate to escape from your poisonous influence—why not hire someone who paid rent to work in a strip mall?
Jay had been very quiet on the drive over. She was always quiet, but usually her silences held a certain charge—judgmental, disapproving, wounded. But she hadn’t said a word since she’d taken the wine bottle from him and gulped it down with those dark siren eyes.
When they were young, she had always been the voice of reason. The conscience he’d never had. Hollybrook’s little angel, he had called her. Rule-abiding to a fault.
But as her eyes lifted from that bottle, she looked like every bad thought he’d ever had. He wasn’t sure what to make of her silence or that look, but he liked it, just as he’d liked seeing her finally stand up to her evil bitch of a mother.
“You think I was too harsh,” he said at last.
“What?” Jay blinked like she was coming out of a terrible dream. “No. She’s been awful my whole life but I just didn’t want to see it. To think that she would go through all that effort to hurt me . . . after all that I’ve been through—”
“It was cruel.”
“Yes, it was cruel.” She looked as remote as she had in those conference rooms, whenever he’d given someone a talking down. “For so long, she was the only family I ever had . . . andshe made me feel soawful. She’s never looked at me the way that she looked at me today. Like she was afraid of me.”
“That’s called power,” he said. “Enjoy it.”
“I feel like I shouldn’t.”
“Why? Because it might make you a bad person?” He tilted her face towards his. “Be a bad person, then. Take a little pleasure in thwarting that spiteful bitch.”Who fucking hit you.
“Do you really think she’ll leave town?”
“God, I hope so.” He leaned back from her, reaching down to unbuckle his seatbelt. “I’ve always liked it better when the trash takes itself out.”
Jay slid out of the car, rubbing at the cheek her mother had slapped. Her face was solemn but there was a restless energy in her movements; it was as if she had been a wilting blossom that had just been placed in a new glass of water and finally allowed to bloom now that she’d shaken off her mother’s poison.
I see you now, he thought.This is the you that you don’t give anyone else.
Strong and even a little vicious beneath all the sweet.
The woman who fucked him with her nails buried in her back.
Frank Van Hoff was at his desk, sifting through his papers. He didn’t look up when the door opened. “I don’t take walk-ins. If you want to arrange a consultation, do it through my website.”
“I think you’ll want to see me.”
